Over the last year or so we’ve been working closely with some postsecondary education clients. What I want to take a close look at is what we’re doing for a certain college. The outcome is an example of what we mean when we say KDI gives organizations the tools to change their business model.
We’re modernizing the college’s student registration system. It’s online, it’s quick, and it looks nice. However, that doesn’t change the business model.
We’re making it possible for the administrators to see how many people are signing up for a course, and whether they ought to run it or not. That’s still not really changing the business model, though it does make decision making faster and more accurate.
What’s happening now, though, is this: because graduate students need work in a specific field (say an ancient language), and since the college can now track certification of individuals, the administrators can now see at the start of the course planning process who and how many students need specific training. Rather than waiting for individual students to realize they need the prerequisite, then individually pop up requests for the course, the college itself can determine long before that so many students need a course in, say, ancient Greek. The administrators will know immediately if there are enough potential students to justify offering the course this term, or not. Now that’s changing the business model.
The spilldown goes right into course loading, facilities planning, and teaching assignments. Gone are the days of “Let’s offer a course and see what happens. If it gets overbooked, we’ll figure out a way to offer another section. If there’s not enough interest, we’ll cancel it — and disappoint the students who signed up for it.”
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